by Laura Martin
‘Mudga dhurdi,’ George said in greeting, causing the old man to open his mouth wide and begin guffawing with laughter.
‘Your pronunciation hasn’t improved in your absence,’ Djalu said with a shake of his head. George saw the old man turn his gaze on Alice and waited as he looked her up and down, smiling genially all the time. ‘Your wife is far too pretty for you,’ he said after a few moments.’ He turned to Alice. ‘You’re far too pretty for a rugged old man like him.’
‘She’s not my wife,’ George said at the same instant that Alice spoke up.
‘I’m not his wife.’
Djalu looked at them both for a long moment, then shrugged. ‘It is a shame. Fitzgerald is always alone.’ He turned his attention back to George. ‘It is not good to be alone in this world, my friend.’
It would not do to point out the old man was alone. Over the years George had found out a little of his history. It wasn’t pleasant or comfortable. Djalu had always lived in the area, travelling and living off the land as the native people of Australia had been doing for centuries. His stories told of how he’d been there when the first fleet had arrived, been dazzled and awed by the arrival of a shipload of Englishmen. Then in the smallpox outbreak that followed he’d lost his wife. Disease after disease, new to his tribe, had ripped everyone he had ever loved from him within ten years of the English landing at Botany Bay.
‘Would you care for some bark tea?’ Djalu motioned for George and Alice to sit, pointing at the only other available seat, a roughly hewn wooden bench that would only just fit both of them.
Alice hesitated for a moment, glancing at George, then perched herself on the very edge of the bench. George sat down next to her, doing everything he could not to touch her, but his legs brushing against her anyway. It was warm even in the shade of the tree and George shrugged off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves and running a hand around the back of his neck to try to cool himself. Next to him he could feel the heat coming off Alice’s body and he wondered how uncomfortable she must be in the tight constraints of her dress. An unbidden image of her loosening the ties at her back and letting the dress drop down to her hips popped into George’s mind. In it she was looking over her shoulder at him enticingly.
George almost laughed—he couldn’t imagine Alice ever looking at him like that. He glanced across at her, hoping she couldn’t sense the subtle change in his demeanour. He needed to stop having these inappropriate thoughts, otherwise he was just as bad as she’d imagined him to be. Just as lecherous as all the other men who’d tried to take advantage of her. Just as bad as his father.
‘Mr Fitzgerald won’t bite you,’ Djalu said, frowning at the stiff way Alice was leaning away from George. ‘He’s a good man, not like those brutes on the ships.’
George was always amazed at how perceptive the old man was. In just a few short minutes he’d analysed Alice’s behaviour and come to the correct conclusion.
Glancing at him, Alice gave a wary smile, but George could tell she was looking to see if he’d taken much notice of Djalu’s comment about the ship. Feeling the first stirrings of anger, he wondered what she’d been through on the transport ship, wondered just what she’d had to suffer during the long months at sea.
‘I knew a woman a long time ago,’ Djalu said as he poured out the steaming liquid. ‘She was one of the early female convicts. Never said exactly what had happened on the transport ship over here, but she once told me that she had lost all faith in human nature during the voyage.’ His voice was quiet, soothing, and Alice was looking down at her hands, staring at the redden skin, chapped from her work in the laundry.
As he watched a fat tear dropped from one of her eyes and fell on to her fingers. She brushed it away quickly, not looking up so she wouldn’t have to meet his gaze, and in that moment George vowed to himself that he would do whatever it took to show the woman next to him that there were good people in the world.
Djalu handed over the two cups and Alice murmured her thanks, still staring down at her hands.
‘Look at me,’ the old man said, ‘talking about things I have no business prying into. You came here with a question.’
‘The well at the edge of bottom field has dried up,’ George said. ‘I understand it has been a dry couple of months, but even so...’
‘Not just a dry couple of months,’ Djalu said. ‘It has been a dry few years.’ He shrugged, ‘There’s been rain, a little here, a little there, but nowhere near as much as there should have been.’
‘The water table has dropped,’ George said, feeling the beginnings of dread start to form in his stomach. Everything he did, from growing crops to keeping cattle, needed water. And although Australia was warmer than England, during his lifetime they’d never had too many issues with rainfall and water supply. Whenever he thought of his land, the rolling fields interspersed with corpses of trees, it was green and verdant in his imagination. Not sun scorched and dusty as it was now.
‘We may have rain in the next few weeks,’ Djalu said with a shrug, ever the optimist.
‘Have you ever known it to be this dry?’
George watched the old man as his eyes moved leisurely from side to side as if he were reliving the years of his life in his mind.
‘From 1770 to 1773,’ he said after a minute. ‘It was worse then. Three years with hardly any rain. We had to move around much more than usual to survive.’
‘But the land recovered?’
‘It recovered. Just like it will this time. But whether that will be in a few months or a few years it is hard to know.’
George nodded slowly. They would have to wait out the drought and, in the meantime, come up with ways to keep the livestock watered and the crops growing.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the older man. George stood and Alice followed, but Djalu held up a hand, motioning for them to wait for a moment.
‘I have something that might interest you,’ Djalu said. He ambled inside his house, coming back out after a few moments, handing George a delicate stem with a brilliant red, strangely shaped flower on it. ‘The desert pea plant,’ he said. ‘I thought you could add it to your collection. I found it on one of my trips out into the desert.’
‘Thank you.’
They remounted their horses and only when they’d waved goodbye to Djalu from a distance did George speak. He’d seen how uncomfortable Alice had been when his old friend had mentioned the horrors some women endured on the transport ships and he hated the haunted look in her eyes even as she thought of it now.
‘Djalu is a good man, dependable,’ he said slowly. ‘He knows this land better than anyone else I know.’
Alice nodded.
‘And he’s seen people come and go, from his own tribe and others, and settlers and convicts.’
Again Alice nodded, but still didn’t speak. George tried a different approach.
‘Do you recall the two men who visited the day you arrived at Mountain View Farm? Robertson and Crawford.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re my two closest friends. Two good men...’ He paused, looking over at Alice. ‘They were both convicts when I first knew them.’
He saw the surprise register on Alice’s face. Although most of the ex-convicts who’d served out their sentence settled in Australia and made a life for themselves, not many were as successful as Robertson and Crawford. Between them they owned at least five thousand acres and probably had bought more land in the time he’d been away.
‘They were transported as young boys, worked for a couple of years building roads in Sydney and then ended up as convict workers on my father’s farm.’ He thought back fondly to the days of their youth when the three of them had run wild around the Australian countryside, looked on indulgently by his father.
‘Robertson was ten when he was convicted and Crawford twelve, they were only children. They don’t often talk
about their time on the transport ship, only to say it was the worst part of their entire sentence, worse even than the back-breaking manual labour of building roads.’ He paused and saw the pain behind Alice eyes that she was trying to hide behind a stony expression. ‘I just want you to know that you’re safe now,’ he said quietly. ‘You have a job here for as long as your sentence lasts. There’s no one to force you to do anything you don’t want to, no one to take away what should only be yours to give.’
For a moment he thought Alice wasn’t listening, she was perfectly still on the back of her horse, looking more like a statue than a living, breathing woman. Then she turned to look at him and he saw the tears glinting in her brilliant blue eyes.
‘I’m not sure if I can believe you’re real,’ she said quietly.
George smiled, waiting for her to say more.
‘It feels like this is all a dream and at any moment I’m going to wake up and be pulled back to that whipping post and my awful life in Sydney.’
‘I won’t let that happen, Alice.’
She regarded him again and he saw one of the tears roll out of her eyes and on to her cheek. He wanted to lean across the gap between them and wipe it away with his thumb, but he knew he couldn’t do something so intimate. Alice raised her fingers to her face, drying off the tears and shaking her head ruefully.
‘I don’t cry,’ she said, a rueful tone to her voice. ‘Even on the transport ship I didn’t cry.’
‘Did someone hurt you on there?’ George asked. The last thing he wanted was to make her live through her nightmare again, but he had the feeling she was about to start opening up to him.
She nodded, looking down at her hands where they grasped the reins.
‘They don’t separate the men and the women,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d heard rumours when I was in gaol, waiting to be put on the transport ship, but I didn’t quite believe them. When we were thrown down the hatch into the bowels of the ship I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
‘Someone attacked you?’ George asked gently. He knew it wouldn’t have just been someone, there would have been a pack mentality.
‘They did. As soon as the guards had closed the hatch and we were left on our own it began.’ Her voice had gone quiet as if the pain of remembering was too much for her. ‘There were ten women. Two were old, too old to be of interest. But as soon as the ship began moving all eyes were on the rest of us.’ She shuddered and George felt the urge to gather her in his arms, but he knew physical contact was the last thing she would want while remembering this horrible ordeal.
‘There was this one man, he had such an evil look in his eyes—’ She broke off for a moment. ‘He kept staring at me and moving closer and closer. He whispered that he would look after me, save me from the other men.’
George felt a hot surge of rage at the idea of Alice suffering like this. She might have committed a crime, but no woman deserved to be punished so awfully.
She shook her head. ‘I probably should have accepted.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I had a long piece of wood I’d sharpened to a point while I was in gaol, just in case the rumours about the ships were true. When he...’ She swallowed, composing herself before continuing. ‘When he put his hands on me I stabbed him in the stomach as hard as I could.’
George blinked in surprise. It hadn’t been how he’d feared the encounter would end.
‘Did he die?’
Alice shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. He lashed out a couple of times and then was pulled back by some of the other men. Later that day when the guards came to give us our rations he was taken up on deck to have his wound seen to. I saw him at a distance after that, but he must have been put in one of the other compartments.’
‘Did anyone else try to...?’ George asked.
He saw the pain flash before her eyes and knew there must have been some other incidents.
‘Mostly I gained a reputation as someone to be left alone,’ she said and George had to wonder at the significance of the mostly. ‘But I did have to sleep with one eye open.’
‘Not a pleasant crossing, then?’
‘Without a doubt the worst experience of my life.’
They rode on in silence for a moment, both lost in Alice’s recounting of her time on the transport ship.
‘I meant what I said,’ George said quietly. ‘You have a safe place here with me for the remainder of your sentence. Mrs Peterson can use your help and you won’t need to worry about your safety.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice said quietly, raising her eyes up to meet his. In that moment George felt something squeeze inside his chest and he knew he needed to look away, but the intensity of her gaze was difficult to break. ‘It’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.’
Chapter Seven
Alice watched as Mr Fitzgerald swung himself down from his horse and took a step towards the muddy pool of water. The sun was high in the sky now and even through the layers of her clothes she could feel the intensity of its heat on her skin. She envied the way Mr Fitzgerald had shed layers, taking off his jacket as the temperatures had risen, now to be dressed in just a cool cotton shirt and his trousers.
As if they had a mind of their own her eyes danced over his body as he walked away from her, taking in the strong muscles of his legs, the broad, strong back and the arms that looked as though they could lift her without any problem at all. He was a physically fit man. An attractive man. A man she couldn’t tear her eyes away from.
‘Inappropriate,’ she murmured to herself, too quiet for Mr Fitzgerald to hear, even though she knew her protest was too little too late.
The man in front of her was attractive with his kind eyes and warming smile and the body she could just imagine running her hands over, but that wasn’t the only reason she was feeling like a giddy schoolgirl in his presence. There was a kindness to him, a generosity, that she had never experienced before. He’d rescued her for no other reason than he believed that to be the right thing to do. He’d promised her a safe home for the duration of her sentence, promised she wouldn’t need to live in fear again.
It was impossible not to fall for him just a little. Even after everything she’d been through.
Alice watched as he crouched down near the edge of the muddy pool, watched as the shirt stretched across his back and found herself imagining lifting it off over his head and running her hands over his chest. Quickly she closed her eyes, trying to banish the thought, but it lived on in her imagination.
It’s impossible, she told herself. There were so many reasons nothing could happen between them, not least he’d made it clear nothing would happen. Mr Fitzgerald had looked aghast at the idea of abusing his authority and power over her. For as long as she was in his employ, his convict worker, he wouldn’t even notice her that way.
Trying to suppress a bubble of hysteria, she clamped her lips tight. Of course he’d never consider her anyway, even if he wasn’t bound by his strict moral code. She was a convict girl and even before that she’d been many rungs below him on the social ladder. Before her conviction she’d even been working as a servant, that was how low she’d been brought.
Bill, she thought with disgust at the man who’d promised her the world and instead taken everything from her. That was another reason she was probably finding Mr Fitzgerald so attractive. He was the opposite of Bill in every way. Mr Fitzgerald’s blond hair and blue eyes were as light as Bill’s features were dark. And Mr Fitzgerald was kind, generous, always thinking of others, whereas Bill was the most selfish person she’d ever known. Of course at first he’d been charming, giving her enough compliments to make her feel like the only woman alive, but once he’d persuaded her to leave her family and everything she knew behind he’d changed. And he’d changed her.
‘There’s something stuck in the middle,’ Mr Fitzgerald called, looking back over his shoul
der at her.
Alice slipped down from the horse, tying her gentle mare to the same tree Mr Fitzgerald had looped his reins over.
‘Look,’ he said as she came to stand beside him. He raised an arm, brushing her side gently as he did so and sending a tingle of excitement through her at the contact.
She peered out into the muddy pool, looking at where he was indicating. It was difficult to see, there were logs and debris sticking up out of the mud, from where they would normally be positioned on the floor of a much deeper pond.
‘Next to that log,’ he said. Alice felt her breath catch in her chest as he moved in even closer so she could see exactly where he was pointing.
Trying to concentrate, she peered out, eventually making out a scruffy, muddy ball of fur in the middle of the mud. Every so often it would struggle a little, but even she could see the movements were weak and without real purpose.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he began to untuck his shirt from his waistband.
‘It’s muddy,’ he said simply. ‘There’s no need for me to spoil a good shirt.’
‘You’re going out there?’ She eyed the swampy ground, trying to distract herself from Mr Fitzgerald’s movements as he pulled the shirt off over his head.
‘Of course,’ he said, turning to her.
It was impossible to not look. Her eyes moved downwards taking in the tanned chest covered in light hairs, further to his toned abdomen, so taut she could see the muscles defined clearly, rippling as he moved, and lower to the waistband of his trousers. For one giddy moment she thought he might shed those as well and she found herself leaning in closer involuntarily.
Control yourself, she cautioned as one hand started to rise up to touch the impossibly perfect skin over the muscles of his torso. He was her employer, a man who had assured her in no uncertain terms that he harboured no attraction to her whatsoever. With an effort she managed to turn the movement into a gesture for him to hand over his shirt.
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ he said, flashing her one of his smiles.